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An insult to the concept

Our President told us this week that workers in Ohio and elsewhere will miss out on valuable job training. They will, he says, if Representative Paul Ryan’s House budget is passed. That remark is an insult to your intelligence. Because the bill calls for no such thing.

Ryan’s bill calls for streamlining government job training programs. Merging many of them. It does so with convoluted sentences. And five-dollar words. Such language is an insult to you.

But the real insult is that your federal government runs 49 job training programs. Yes, 49! Nine different agencies run these programs.

Here is further insult: Forty-four of them do not check results. They spend your money to train people who are out of work. But they never check to see whether anybody gets work as a result of the training.

More insult: Five of these programs did check. And maybe that is why the other 44 don’t check. Those that checked, found the training they provided did little or no good. The money was wasted. Even in the biggest of the programs.

I’m sorry, but there is more: This is not new. It has been going on for decades. The General Accounting Office reported this in the 1990’s. The GAO reported this in 2000. The GAO reported this in 2003. What they reported was that there were a slew of programs. And they duplicated each other. And they ate up huge amounts of your taxes. And they accomplished sweet Fanny Adams.

Congress further insulted you. Faced with this appalling situation…they added three more job training programs. Three more! And they lifted job training spending by $5 billion.

In case you don’t feel insulted enough: One training program gave $5 million to a special advocacy group. This group knew how to get this government’s attention. It combined labor unions and environmentalists. To train people for green jobs. So far it has spent $3 million. It has found jobs for 16 people.

The GAO found one grant that went to guys who spent $4 on themselves for every $1 they spent training workers. It found millions has been spent training people for those beloved “green” jobs that never existed. You know: “A solar-powered machine for this does not exist. But this is how you would operate it if it did exist.”

Now, suppose you waded into the machinery of your federal government. Do you suppose this is the only example of idiocy you would find? This is the same government that cannot even tell us how many vehicles it owns. Not only does its left hand not know what its right hand is doing. It doesn’t even know whether it has a right hand. It has dozens upon dozens of anti-poverty programs. It has hundreds of programs to improve education.

You should feel insulted. Your government steals your money. Your representatives vote to steal your money. They all know that billions are wasted in ridiculous programs like these. They know it. They have known it for years. They promise to stop the waste. And they do nothing. They are helpless. They are hopeless.

From top to bottom, they are an insult to the concept of responsible government. When the President was asked about his waste-slashing, he found where he had cut $100 million. In a budget of nearly $4 trillion. “Sweetie, I cut our grocery bill by one cent.”

Congress is no better. It cannot find waste to cut. ABC Polling says only 9 percent of us approve of Congress. The 9 percent are probably the folks who are getting the money to run the job training programs.

From Tom ... as in Morgan.

For more columns and for Tom’s radio shows and new TV shows (and to write to Tom): tomasinmorgan.com.